Read all about it in journal special issues

Dr Maroula Perisanidi and Professor Claire Eldridge have both recently been part of teams co-editing special issues of key historical journals.

Historicising Trans Pasts

Dr Maroula Perisanidi has co-edited a special issue of Gender & History with Dr Chris Mowat and Dr Joanna de Groot on the topic of ‘Historicising Trans Pasts’. The articles cover a wide chronological range from the ancient world to the early twentieth century. As the editors note in their introduction, adopting a broad perspective on the history of transness, even when the past does not fit our preconceived ideas, ‘makes visible the forces that naturalise genders’, ‘unravels the illusion of singular definitions’, and helps us create ‘trans-temporal communities’. 
 
Dr. Perisanidi says that the most rewarding part of this experience was helping early career scholars publish their first articles.

It's such a new field, and it's incredibly exciting to play even a small role in helping it grow and become more established.

Dr Mowat appreciated the opportunity to bring scholars of different periods and geographical areas together.

It is great to think about the connections that can be made by thinking about what the articles do alongside each other, and the conversations we were able to have - and hopefully continue to have - by thinking so broadly.

Find the details of ‘Historicising Trans Pasts’, special issue of Gender & History 36.1 (2024) on the journal’s website.

War Makes Monsters

As Professor Claire Eldridge and Dr Julie M. Powell seek to show in their guest-edited special issue of French Historical Studies, ‘War Makes Monsters’, notions of crime and criminality are not fixed but constantly under negotiation, particularly in times of crisis and great societal change, such as war. While there is some truth to the adage 'war makes monsters', this tells only part of the story. War creates a context for the renegotiation of what constitutes 'crime', making criminals of some while exonerating others, providing cover for certain misdeeds even as it trains a spotlight on others. Using case studies from France between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, the articles show how crime and war are connected both materially and imaginatively, exploring how ideas about one shape how we understand and respond to the other.
 
The special issue emerged out of a workshop held at University College Dublin in June 2022. The interactive discussions between the workshop participants, whose research spanned well beyond France, not only enriched the final special issue but provided one of the most enjoyable parts of this experience.
 
Find the details of 'War Makes Monsters', special issue of French Historical Studies 47.2 (2024). To complement the special issue, French Historical Studies has made freely available a selection of published articles probing the interconnectedness of war and crime. These can be accessed as a curated digital issue ‘Connecting Histories of Crime and Conflict’.